SOURCE: Rubin, Merle. “Taking Wing.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (8 November 1998): 10.

In the following review, Rubin asserts that “while some of the stories may seem a little too pat and some of the narrators a little too pleased with themselves, Flights of Angels is on the whole a satisfying collection.”

Novelist, poet and short-story writer Ellen Gilchrist made an impressive literary debut in 1981 with her book of short stories, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams. Her 1984 collection, Victory Over Japan, won that year's National Book Award for fiction. Since then, more than a dozen books—story collections, novels, autobiographical nonfiction—have appeared: a mixed bag, in which can be found much that is poignant, funny, charming, wry, moving, even wise, but also much that is coy, preachy, self-satisfied, well-nigh insufferable.

By and large, it seems fair to say that Gilchrist's short fiction has been stronger than her novels...